Eye of the Overwatch
by Cheesus333
Summary: Life on both sides of the Combine Overwatch, as told by a citizen-turned-Metrocop and a Resistance inductee.
1. Chapter 1

The Eyes of the Overwatch

The train trundled over long-rusted tracks, screeching as the brakes struggled to slow the steel juggernaut. I held a suitcase containing everything I owned in my right hand, and leant against the window with my left, gazing out into the dull, grey sky outside. Somehow, they had taken the life out of that too.

I don't know how many years it had been under their rule. Life beneath the eyes of the overwatch was timeless; eternal. When every day was like the last, telling one from the other was pointless. Days meant nothing so weeks meant nothing until years rolled over one another, collapsing into a single, indistinguishable event. That event was life, and it was one from which only one escape promised hope. Although everything seemed to be remaining the same, there was an essence of decay to it too. The Combine drained the life and soul out of us, as if our oceans and animals weren't enough. Something in the water, they said. All I knew was that it was killing us.

I surveyed the rest of the carriage. Behind me, the bench was seated upon by another passenger who looked on the brink of tears, which I could sympathise with. His regulation blue outfit was dirty from years of crouching in the dirt, praying for the beatings to stop. Empty grey eyes mirrored the empty grey sky. He was dead. Yeah, he breathed and walked and probably talked, but the soul that pulled those strings wasn't there. This puppet danced for no-one, and for no reason at all.

I turned my head to see the rest of the carriage was empty. The train jolted to a halt and staggered me, indicating that we had arrived. When I rose, a man stood at the end of the carriage. This was odd, as I knew he wasn't there before. The door hadn't opened and he couldn't have come in through the roof – by all evidence he could have only materialised out of the cold, stale air. In all honesty though, I didn't even care. Something like that would have raised questions, once. It might have fired some spark of curiosity inside, but now I didn't even care.

The man looked to be in the latter half of his twenties, but his eyes were older. Wisened, jaded. Locked doors hiding trials and triumphs much beyond his character. His face was consumed by a beard, shaved close to the skin, and his hair was short. Glasses perched upon his nose, an unusual sight in this dystopian hell. He looked around the carriage, apparently as confused about his arrival as I was. The doors opened and he rushed out before me, not running but with a brisk stride. When I collected my suitcase and stepped out into the cold Russian air of City 17, he was gone.

My induction into the city was uneventful. This one seemed like every other I'd lived in, except for one thing: the Citadel. I saw it as soon as I left the station: a great, space-age monolith juxtaposed into a 20th century urban district. Great cables and wires stretched from rooftops high and low up to its perfectly smooth walls, sections of which slid out and up like segments of a shell to allow gunships, dropships and city scanners passage into the area. This monument of tyranny housed the Administrator, Dr. Wallace Breen: the so-called 'ambassador for humanity.' He was the human face of the Combine to those at street-level but it didn't do much to quell the general hatred of them. Seeing him now, my face contorted with spite for the man on the screens – the man who, at this very moment, was surely sipping Merlot at this opulent office high in the Citadel.

I looked around the square outside the station. A tall statue stood at the centre of an unimpressive plaza. Metrocops guarded secure perimeters, and a few citizens sat on benches or walked about, wasting away the meaningless hours, whiling away the time before their bodyclock reached its inevitable end. This long and uninterrupted event called 'life' was made up mostly of this now but other exciting activities included: trying to sleep, feeding on the putrescent manna that the Combine distributed and having your face kicked into the dirt and concrete. The end was as simple as can be, yet always out of reach. I shook my head, and left the plaza.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a strange device attached to the door, but not an unfamiliar one. A malicious red eye leered back at me from the centre of the sinister lock, and startled me when it flashed green. The door swung open, barely hanging onto its hinges with the weight of the cumbersome metal attachment. A Metrocop stood before me, brandishing his stun baton in one hand and shoving me back with the other.

"Watch it, citizen," he barked through his ivory-white face mask. Mirrored discs guarded his eyes, and a breather exhaled and inhaled with a calm, regular pace. I shot my eyes down to the ground instinctively, then regretted it. The guard walked past me, laughing maliciously with the famous sadism of the Civil Protection, and I entered the building.

Climbing the dank stairway to my shared living quarters, I noticed some of the tattered propaganda hanging off the walls. 'CMB' was emblazoned in harsh, sharp letters, always featured alongside the claw-like image that represented the Overwatch. One in particular caught my attention: a CP stood menacingly, baton raised, finger pointing out of the poster... straight at me. The slogan read 'They're here for _you_.' Clever double meaning. Nice. I continued up the stairs.

The apartment I lived in was shared with three others. Josh and Kelly, a married couple, spent most of their time worrying about the horrible world they lived in and, despite this, never seemed to do much about it. Kevin, a widower, gazed out of the window from dawn to dusk, and never said a word to anyone. More understandable than the couple's resigned terror, but no more useful.

I sat down at our small, rotting table whereupon a greying porcelain bowl sat self-consciously. I dragged it towards me, and reached for a nearby container. Unscrewing the cap, I poured the contents into the bowl: putrid, colourless sludge sopped out into the bowl. I looked at the 'food' and scowled. I had vague memories of real food, not this foul manna, and that made it worse – but worse still was the fact that there would be some who didn't know anything better at all. I wouldn't feed this shit to a dog to keep it from biting my face off and yet here I was, bowl before me, expected to shovel it into my fucking face and swallow. Was it really so wrong to ask for something else – to want something _more?_ Rage welled up inside me; my hands clenched into fists; my body shook; my brow contorted until I couldn't hold it in any more. Certain types of anger demand expression, and this was among those. I had to break something, something loud and nearby and satisfying to destroy.

The windowpane shattered into glorious crystals, glittering in the hazy light outside as the bowl spun through the air and out of the building, dashed to shards on the road below. A shocked whimper escaped Kelly's mouth, one of her rare and generally pitiful utterances, and she and her husband looked up with fear. Fear was all they knew, the only way they could respond to anything. Kevin turned around and stared at me, his face unmoved. Perhaps he was worse: at least, in their terror, John and Kelly were human, but this cold statue of a man was nothing more than an avatar of apathy. I was breathing heavily, and my knuckles were white. I'd had enough of their inaction... and enough of mine, too. I left through the apartment door, and slammed it behind me against the frame.


	3. Chapter 3

There was no sign of my brother when I arrived at my assigned living quarters. I pushed the dingy wooden door open, and it creaked its protest. The first thing I saw in the little room was a man gazing out onto the street, though there didn't seem to be much there beside a broken bowl to hold his attention.

"Hello?" I announced, but the man remained still. A new figure peered round a doorway, and then approached me.

"You must be Stephen," he said to me, "your brother said you were being transferred here from City 14."

"That's right," I replied, shaking the man's extended hand, "where is he?" The stranger shrugged.

"Your guess is as good as mine. Last any of us saw of Matt was a slammed door." Said the man, indicating the open doorway through which I had entered. "I'm Josh, by the way," he said as I rested my suitcase on the kitchen top, "and this is my wife Kelly." I now noticed a woman, hair tied back, stood modestly behind him. She smiled when I looked at her, and gave a polite wave.

"Lovely to meet you, though I wish it were in better circumstances" I said to him, unfastening the little case and inspecting its contents. Everything seemed to be there, but you had to be careful with the Combine Security Fields.

"Don't we all," said Josh sullenly. His eyes fell, and he seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. It was a peculiar sight, like his eyes were mirrors turned inwards so that for a second he saw only inside himself. "That's Kevin at the window, by the way. He never says much." Kevin did not react to the mention of his name.

An uncomfortable silence passed. Josh looked through me, or perhaps inside himself; Kelly hid herself behind her husband; Kevin stared down at the street without a hint of emotion crossing his blank countenance. I saw the window beside him was smashed through, and sure enough there was the bowl I'd spotted before. It lay in fragments on the street amongst a recognisable spreading stain of Protein Supplement: piecing the situation together, I determined that my impatient twin had lost his temper again and stormed out of the tenement building. Well, that was no surprise. Matt always did have his rage.

"Let me show you your bunk," said Josh, shaken from his reverie. He took my suitcase and I thanked him as we walked into the next room. A pale chestnut leather sofa was in a state of disrepair, and was pushed right back against the wall. Opposite this was a double mattress, and a coffee table nearby. A small table held an ancient TV, which itself bore the image of Breen lecturing about 'the dangers of instinct' to his perpetually-captive audience. Josh kept walking, and I followed him into the area beyond, where three mattresses were scattered about an otherwise bare room. He set mine down closest to the window.

"Had to get this from one of the other apartments when we heard you were coming," he said. "'Course, they don't need it now. Not after the last raid..." Josh went suddenly quiet again, and I determined that this was going to happen a lot. I gently nudged his shoulder and he awoke, shaking his head and mumbling. He returned to his wife, leaving me quite alone.

I opened my suitcase again, and took out a small framed photograph. Matt and myself stood together, he with a hunting rifle slung back over his shoulder and an arm around me. We smiled into an old camera, because that was when there were things to smile about. A family. A life. He had gone his way that day and I had gone mine, and before we knew it the world was in the choking grip of its new overlords. Today would have been the first time I had seen him since the photograph – I'd only discovered he was alive a couple of weeks ago and immediately applied for a transfer. Now, it seemed, I had missed him by minutes.

Curling on the mattress, I let my eyes close, and slept.


	4. Chapter 4

I had seen the Civil Protection Recruitment Centre many times in the last few years here, but only as I passed. Now, standing before it, it looked so different.

As an object in the street, the Metrocop Centre was oppressive, a symbol of their hold over us... no, over the citizens. Can't think of myself as one of them now.

I walked up the steps towards the building. It was like most other Combine structures, with their strange navy-blue architecture. Only the sign describing its purpose served to distinguish it from anything else 'Our Benefactors' had built in their time here, as well as the barracks and training ground visible from the entrance.

The door rose as I approached it, revealing a small passage leading into a room. In this room was a desk, constructed from the same dark steel as the building, and behind that sat two CPs.

"Don't piss around filling out forms, I guess," I muttered to myself. I took a seat before the two officers. They looked me up and down.

"Your looking to join Civil Protection. Is that right, citizen?" Barked the one on the left. His ivory facemask was scratched from eye to breather. I decided to nickname him Scarface.

"That's right, officer." I replied calmly.

"Why?" Asked the one on the right. Unlike the other CPs, his mask was resplendent and shining. I decided to nickname this one Captain Clean.

"Because I wish to aid the community in any way I can." Scarface chuckled.

"Why _really_."

"I like beating the crap out of people, and I'd like the right to do it."

They both laughed. Apparently this was sufficient for an interview, as the desk then rose up on a hinge I hadn't noticed and slotted itself into the wall. The CPs stood up from chairs which promptly sank into the ground. Much to my surprise, mine did the same.

"Welcome aboard, recruit," said Captain Clean, gesturing behind him to a door which had just now slid open. "Go through there and meet the Sergeant. He'll sign you up for training."

The Metrocops stood aside to let me pass, and I did.

_This isn't right,_ a voice in my head spoke, _you're betraying everything and everyone you've known since you arrived here._

'Survival comes first,' I answered to my thoughts, 'I have to do what I can to get by.'

_At what cost? _Said the voice. And then, when I remained silent, _What would Stephen and mother say?_

'They would understand. They would know... they would know it was right.'

But I wasn't trying to convince the voice anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

"Mis... ected in... tor..."

The world was a dark, amorphous blur. I was remotely aware of myself lying on the ground, but the ground was... springy, and soft.

"Miscount... in secto..."

Not the ground, a _mattress_. I could see the mattress, and my hands, in the dark world I inhabited. I realised I must be floating on the bunk.

"Misco... ted in sector"

A robotic yet feminine voice kept repeating these words, but I lapsed in and out of what she was saying. New shapes were emerging in the darkness, which was brightening slowly.

"Miscount detected in sector"

I tried to roll over, and my elbow gave way. I found myself on my back, with a hazy figure standing over me. In his hand he held something... a rod, or club?

No, no,_ no!_

The baton came down quickly, slamming into my thigh. Electricity passed through my entire body, causing a spasm, and in my confusion I kicked out at the figure. My foot found home in the Metrocop's knee, and he staggered backwards. Pain still coursed through my body bas I tried to stand, but could only kneel. I crawled over to a table, and pulled myself up there. The world was clear now: not entirely focused, but vivid enough. Kevin was nowhere to be seen; John and Kelly were being beaten by two Metrocops. I could hear their screams through the doorway. The other CP was advancing quickly towards me now, stun baton ready, and I searched for something to defend myself with. My hands groped the table, but it was bare, until an idea emerged from a crazy thought.

Crouching, I seized two legs of the table, and swung as hard as I could. The wood connected with the Metrocop's mask, and he grunted as he spun and fell. The table continued to soar after I let go, and was not stopped by the window. For the second time in this apartment, the glistening shards spiralled through the air to the ground below.

John and Kelly were getting quieter now, which panicked me. I snapped one of the remaining pieces of glass from the window frame, and held it like a dagger.

I was still dazed, but I tried to remember the training our dad had given Matt and I when we were younger. I held the glass back and slightly raised, and held my other arm out to grab or block. Creeping though the doorway, I saw the two CPs. They had stopped now: John was completely still and Kelly was weeping over him. The Metrocops were stood away from me.

With a speed I didn't know I had, I grabbed the closest one around the neck, and pulled him into me, bringing the glass down in an arc to his throat. The fabric there was easily cut: the skin below, even easier. Blood showered out from his neck as he collapsed to the ground, his mask emitting a high-pitched whine as he fell. The other CP turned to me, and I realised I had taken out the wrong one: this one had a gun, whereas a baton I could have easily handled.

The next few things happened in an instant. Footsteps thudded in the next room over, and I was sure it was another squad of Metrocops come in response to the whine of the radio. I stood completely still where I was as the CP before me crumpled like his squadmate before him, as a bullet entered and then exited his head. A splatter of crimson decorated the wall.

"You there, civvie!" Yelled a voice from my left. Three men clad in green stood in the doorway. They all had a band around there arm with... what was that, a lambda? "Did you kill that CP?" The stranger gestured to the officer at my feet. I nodded, and his expression changed to a grin.

"Nice work," he said, moving to the other corpse. He took the pistol from the dead man's hand, and offered it to me. "You don't have a lot of options from here, though," he said to me, "you interested in joining the Resistance?"

He was quite right. I had killed a CP, and my fingerprints were surely on the shard of glass in his neck. I took the pistol from the Resistance soldier. It felt cold in my hand, but _right. _

"Where do we go?" I asked. He grinned again.

"To see the Doctor."


	6. Chapter 6

The room beyond the little recruitment desk was vibrant with chaos. Dozens of Metrocops equipped themselves with submachine guns, handguns and frag grenades, before marching quickly down a hall to my right. The barracks were large, each locker impersonal, and seemed to function as the mess hall too: a long, wide table was strewn with half-finished meals, with many seats around it all pushed away from the table. Whatever was causing this panic had obviously interrupted lunch.

"You there, newbie!" Yelled a voice to my left. I spun to it, to see a Metrocop Sergeant stood directly in front of me. "You ever handled a weapon before?"

I thought back to the combat training my Dad... _our _Dad gave us as boys of 10. Unarmed, melee and a brief tuition with a range of firearms. I tried not to smile.

"Yes sir."

"Handguns?"

"Yes sir."

"Submachine guns?"

"Yes sir."

The Sergeant paused and leaned in, as if he were about to reveal some dangerous secret. "You any good with a shotgun, kid?" I smirked at his masked visage.

"Yes sir."

I couldn't tell, but I thought he might be grinning. With a hurried pace, he strode to a weapons locker and, inserting a strange, dark key, opened a hatch in the top, over the rows of MP7s and pistols. A single-barrelled, 12 gauge shotgun rested inside. It looked like a modified SPAS 12, which was fortunate for me as that was our father's preferred shotgun. The Sergeant returned to me, shotgun in hand.

"Ordinarily, I wouldn't dream of entrusting this little beauty to such a fresh recruit, but... well, these are hardly ordinary circumstances. Aside from that, none of these dead-eyes could hit anything with a shottie anyway." The Sergeant confided. "Suit up from any of these lockers and meet me outside ASAP. I'll brief you there." He turned to walk away, then stopped. "I like you kid," he said, "you'll do well here."

I smiled to myself, and walked to a locker. The uniform slipped over my citizen's clothing, and I pulled the combat vest over the top. One final piece of the uniform remained: the white mask I held in my hand carried the same intimidation as it did on the face of every CP who towered over me. I slipped the ivory white façade over my face and, standing up, gasped as I caught my reflection in the locker's mirror.

The face I saw was not my own.


	7. Chapter 7

"Alright fellas, we're in a hurry, so out the window." Said the leader of the little raid, pulling a coil of rope from his belt. I watched him take a Magnum from his hip, and press it into the wall underneath the windowpane. He fired a single round into the plaster, and it went all the way through, creating a little hole through which he slotted the rope and fastened it tightly.

"Jesus Kyle," said a squad member who I now saw was, in fact, Kevin. "As if killing the CPs weren't enough, now you go firin' revolvers through the bloody walls?" He had pulled a vest over his dirty clothes and apparently recovered a submachine gun from somewhere. It occurred to me that Kevin had probably called the Resistance squad to come and help us out. I smiled my gratitude.

"Like it makes a difference, we'll be out of here in a minute. Grab John and see if you can wake him up. Kelly, I need you calm, controlled and down this rope, you hear me? We'll have your husband fine again, but only if we do this right." Kyle gestured to the two other unnamed Resistance soldiers to go down the rope first, then helped Kelly out the window. Kevin slapped John two times across the face, which awoke him.

"What the f..." John began, then gasped as he took in the situation. "Kevin? Kevin the widower? _You're_ in the Resistance?"

"Overwatch butchered my wife before my friggin' eyes, John. Of course I'm in the goddamn Resistance. Now get your arse down this rope before I send you down express-style. Unless you'd rather explain these lovely Metrocorpses to the reinforcements..." Kevin spoke darkly, with a menace I hadn't expected. I stood open-mouthed.

"Stephen!" said Kyle, indicating the rope, "you with us?"

"Y-yeah... I think so," I replied weakly, sticking the newly-acquired pistol into my pocket and clambering over the windowsill. This was hardly what I'd expected on day one in City 17, but a damnsight better than I'd thought.

We abseiled down the wall of the building and snuck our way down a nearby manhole, pulling the metal disc over our heads with a clang just in time as an Overwatch APC pulled up and the heavy footfalls of armed soldiers thudded against the pavement. I gulped.

This was my life now. My choice had been made for me by a shard of glass and an instinct. It was that instinct that would keep me alive.


	8. Chapter 8

"Out of the vehicle, damnit! Move, soldiers, move!"

I hopped out of the APC, as ordered, and joined a squad of soldiers who were stacked up at a door. One of them flashed a card at the large, obsidian lock: the red light began to flash, and the door exploded into paint-flaked splinters. I dug one out of my flak jacket, and entered the building.

I raised my shotgun to shoulder level. I don't know what training they had, but every CP I saw seemed to fire from the hip. Who the hell taught them, anyway?

"Civilian, release your weapon!" Barked a Metrocop from somewhere above me: he was answered by five gunshots, then a monotonous whine echoed around the dingy apartment building. I slowly moved upstairs, and peeked round the doorway into the hall.

Four Resistance soldiers, each armed with an MP7 submachine gun. Easy enough to take out, I thought. If they'd seen me, they weren't showing it – nothing but silence came through the door to me. I reached for a frag grenade, then reconsidered. Resistance or not, they were still human beings. I chose a flash instead, and rolled it through the threshold.

"Flashbang, get down!" One of them cried out, then four thuds and a loud explosion reached me. I was deafened a little – all I could hear was a shriek of protest from my whimpering ears – but I could see perfectly fine. I kicked one of the soldiers over onto his front, and shot out the back of his knees with my sidearm. He screamed with pain as the slugs embedded themselves into the floorboards, carrying shards of his decimated kneecaps with them. The other three I tagged in the gut. Painful, of course, exceptionally so. But not fatal just yet.

I recovered their weapons, and threw them back through the doorway to the staircase. Two Metrocops must have heard the commotion, because I saw two masked figures surveying my handiwork in the doorframe.

"Nice job, noobie." One of them said as he rolled an incapacitated soldier onto his back, examining the bloody holes in his knees. "Four downed, no casualties. Good work."

"Yeah," added the other, leaning into the face of the petrified soldier. "I'm sure they'll be real grateful you spared them when they're on the train to Nova Prospekt."

I could almost see his sadistic, malicious grin through his filthy white façade as he spat those terrible words. The soldier gasped in terror, then shook his head fiercely.

"No... n-no, please, no!" He rolled over and screamed out at the fresh burning in his legs. He faced me, and I looked back at him. Tears welled in his eyes.

"Kill me." He said, desperately. "Kill me now, you bastard! _Just fucking kill me!_"

Oh God.

Oh good God...


	9. Chapter 9

"You with us, Stephen?"

I turned to see Kyle stood a little in front of me. We were in a surprisingly large sewer pipe (I thought it might be a main one into which the smaller pipes fed), and the group were running ahead through the filth. Raw, dark sewage filled my boots and reached up to my shins; I quelled the urge to gag.

"Yeah..." I replied, half-dazed – mostly by the situation, but the stench wasn't helping. "I'm right behind you. Lead the way." Kyle nodded.

Sludge squelched beneath my feet with every frantic step through the mysterious, unpleasant liquid. The sound of Combine activity was ever-present above our heads – a platoon of soldiers sprinting here, the whir of a heli's rotors there, even the crushing blows of a Strider's spiked appendages on the asphalt sometimes. Still, we made our way through the pipes until we eventually reached a clearing of sorts: light fell through a grid about ten feet above us to show three pipes, one of which we were stood in, spilling out into a little pool, which in turn spilled into a storm drain. Beyond that drain, a large, steep ramp flowed down into shadowy oblivion. Kevin must have detected the look on my face as I surveyed the environment.

"Three guesses where we're going, kid." I gestured beyond the storm drain. He nodded.

"How do we get through?" I asked. The two-inch-thick steel poles barring our way presented an obvious obstacle.

"We employ a little initiative, he said, strapping what appeared to be an explosive charge to one of the poles. "Up and out, everyone. You don't want to be in here when this little beauty goes off."

We all hopped into a pipe, and crouched as low as we could without getting a face full of sewage. Kevin thumbed a detonator, waiting for a signal from Kyle: when it came, he pressed the button with force.

The bar was utterly disintegrated by the blast, and its neighbours didn't fare much better. I could see we would easily fit through the gap... but what then? Surely it wasn't safe to slide down that ramp into who-knows-what. Kevin once again read my mind like I was shouting it all out.

"Come on now, Stephen. Do you really think I'd just throw you into a storm drain if I didn't think we'd survive it. Trust me, kid," he said in a voice that made me want to do just that, "I know what I'm doing." I hesitated, then nodded once.

"Now I don't suppose we have any volunteers for pole position?" Kyle asked the group.

"Here's one," Kevin said, seizing my limp hand and raising it as I stood dumbly.

"Good job, Stephen, I like a bit of enthusiasm. Feet first or head first?"

I sighed. I suppose it was decided that I was sliding into the jaws of fate before the rest then. "Feet first would be the obvious choice." I said with a hint of spiteful resignation.

"As you wish. After you, then - into the breach and all that."

I gave one last look above me, to the sky beyond the drain. The sky had cleared up now and, by the looks of the shades of pink creeping in from the West, it was coming up to dusk. Elegant clouds drifted by, one side of each illuminated a soft rose, oblivious to the pandemonium so many miles below. If that view of the sky had been my last, I wouldn't have minded a bit.

Luckily, it wasn't.

With a powerful swing, I flung myself down the greasy ramp and into the unknown.


	10. Chapter 10

Trying to keep a soldier's composure was hard, then. Harder than anything I'd endured up to that point, and harder than a lot of the things to come. Stood in my Civil Protection (and they said the Combine didn't have a sense of humour) armour, the temptation to break down and just scream into my mask was almost unbearable.

I stood at my post, staring out at the world, trying not to cry.

"You," barked a voice somewhere nearby, "shotgun guy!" Looking at the large shotgun in my hands it came slowly to my mind that that was me. I turned to answer the call.

"We're leaving. Stop standing there like a lemon and get in the damned APC." I nodded, and did as instructed.

I didn't know where we were going. Back to the barracks? To the next mission? It was just as likely we were all off to get some fucking ice cream for what the incomprehensible voice in my ear was telling me. The Overwatch, constantly whining through my helmet speakers, was becoming part of my own internal voice. It wasn't even in the helmet anymore, it was in my head. And I knew the orders before I heard them – oh boy did I know them. I had been in the force about half an hour and I knew every damn thing the bitch said. Everything _I_ said. Did everyone else hear her too? Looking around at the rest of the soldiers, it didn't look likely. They were all sat silently, staring forward. Unmoving. Entirely obedient, waiting for the next order to be delivered to their brains so they could perform it with Labrador-esque enthusiasm. It occurred to me that I was the only one looking around. I stopped.

When the APC skidded to a quick halt, the rear door fell open more than it swung. With a heavy 'clang', the steel hit the concrete and we jumped out in formation. I took point – I did, after all, have the CQB weapon. And no-one else could shoot for shit. I realised that these dead-eye initiates were my only support – my life was essentially in their hands.

Life. With the mere thought of the word, a chill ran through every vein in my body. This wasn't a game – this was me living or me dying. A stray bullet, a shard of rampant shrapnel, a sneaky enemy... these could end it with disturbing ease. There'd be nothing I could do, nothing the useless bastards behind me could do. It would be the end of me and everything I'd ever been and ever could be. The death of a thousand futures for myself. It was a worrying concept, so I pushed it to the back of my panic-stricken mind.

Looking around, I tried to get a grip of where we were. A canal, I supposed, though it looked more like a causeway for raw sewage. Rusty iron bars in equally rusty frames bordered one end of this particular section of canal, with putrid water flowing between them. About halfway between where we were stood and the other end was an entrance from the left, where more water flowed in. To my right was a long plank, which lead like a path to the rusty bars. It looked like someone could jump over if they tried, which was presumably their purpose. A mounted turret rested before me, overlooking the whole area, and a soldier quickly seized control of it. We were all in position, guns raised. Had I been listening at the time, I'd have probably known what – _who_ – we were waiting for. But my question was answered soon enough anyway as, in a blur of orange and grey, he emerged from the side entrance. I stood, stunned, staring at our target.

Dr. Gordon Freeman.


	11. Chapter 11

The tunnel was, as I expected, very moist and very unpleasant. As I slid I accelerated quickly, and the white bar far below me soon widened into a yawning opening. The closer I got the more I could make out, until finally I emerged from the pipe into a splash pool. I burst into the water, sinking slowly, and it was a few moments before I got my bearings together and pulled myself to the surface.

I gasped for air and was met with a stench even more foul than from the sewers above. I wasn't sure where we were now: the pool I floated in flowed out via a small stream into a drain system some distance away which plummeted through a large steel grate and into the gloomy depths of the earth. I looked around: behind me was a cliff, into which the pipe was built and from which it jutted now, spewing a slow drip of sewage from the city. Before me was a small section of sandy beach, which extended far off to either side. It was littered with large boulders, grassy mesas and – most noticeably – junk. Doors, crates, paint cans, planks... this beach surely contained everything that City 17 had ever thrown out, and in some places it was so tightly-packed that the sand was hidden beneath it. Had I then known the purpose of this abstract collection of refuse, I wouldn't have pondered it so deeply, but I did not. I would be quick to figure out, though. I dragged myself out of the water and collapsed onto a concrete slab.

Behind me, another splash alerted me to the arrival of the squad. Apparently they had entered en masse, as there was only one sound and they all surfaced at once in a confused, soggy group. They looked around, and waded over to where I had climbed onto the ledge.

"Where now?" I asked of Kyle, who was inspecting his gun. It was good to see he had his priorities straight – checking his weapon before even performing a headcount. Then again, if the Combine chanced upon us now with malfunctioning pistols, we'd be the next things to litter the dull sands of this scrapyard beach. Kyle looked around and somehow drew a location from the vague surroundings.

"Oh. Shit... this isn't... right..." He said half to himself, and frantically drew a damp map from a dripping satchel at his side. He quickly unfurled the scroll to reveal a map of the area around the city – I looked over his shoulder and tried to make sense of it.

City 17 and its local environment was unfamiliar to me – I hadn't even been here a day – but the cluster of buildings in the centre of the map was unmistakable as it was the only city there, and certain points of interests were roughly circled in vibrant red. Kyle indicated one such circle now.

"We need to get to here. Black Mesa East." He then moved his finger in a large arc around the city to the opposite side, in an empty stretch of coast bordering the sea. "And we're here."

"Is this a joke? It's because I'm new here, right?" I objected. Kyle looked at me with an expression of sarcastic disbelief.

"Yeah. I'm kidding. It's a fucking joke. Now you just walk _that _way till you're up to your knees in antlions, _then_ it gets really funny. That's the punchline – we all get desiccated and die horribly because the fucking map was upside down, or something. Everyone laugh!" Kyle began to laugh with an almost insane desperation, and I looked appealingly around. The others were as confused and stunned as I.

"There are no jokes here. We're not play-fighting, we're not kids with mud stripes painted on our cheeks. I don't know if you noticed, but the world is run by aliens. And even the bits that they don't run are infested with God-knows-fucking-what. We are not at an advantage against them, we do not have the upper hand at all. We don't even know what we're doing! So just assume from hereon out, if you'd be so kind, that _I am not joking._" A long, uncomfortable pause ensued. I knew he was right, everyone knew he was right, but... I hadn't even known Kyle that long, and I knew this was definitely not like him. He sighed heavily, and threw his arms up.

"I'm sorry. I get stressed and snap easily, it's... it's a condition. Maybe they'd treat me for it if the Combine hadn't slaughtered everyone even partially qualified." He laughed weakly, a sharp contrast to his mad, bellowing laughter earlier. "Just... just don't take it to heart, okay? I'm sorry. We do need to move though."

"I get it. Let's go." I replied sharply.

If he'd told us anything then it was that there was no time for sentimentality. If I'd thought I was going to make friends on this... whatever this was, I was wrong – this was about survival, and nothing more. No attachments, no frivolity, no light chit-chat between acquaintances. And no jokes. We lived or we died, and that was the end of it. Kyle knew that, and now we knew it too.

We gathered around the map, gathered our bearings, and set out.


	12. Chapter 12

Comm chatter and gunfire: the anthem of the soldier, the battle music of the modern warrior. It was in my ears now, all those voices that were mine and not mine screeching in my ear like static from a dead TV. And the guns, erupting in their own little chorus, punctuated here and there by the whine of a dying radio channel. These screeches were voices blinking out, all immediately swallowed in the panic that followed their demise. The doctor moved between us with unprecedented and unpredictable agility, his weapon raised above his head and brought down like a club in a rusty flash. I couldn't see what it was – through the tiny, useless portholes of my mask, I could only see that I was going to die, and it was going to be at this man's hands. My shotgun barked against my shoulder, a Rottweiler off its chain with rabid spittle of buckshot flying in clumps of shell fragment from the muzzle. My shots met no target, because no-one could find it. When he appeared in my vision it was in passing, already on the way out, a snapshot of my target and enemy: a man I didn't know and was being made to murder.

All of a sudden, as my weapon barked its last and died uselessly in my hands, silence took hold of the world outside my mask. I realised now that the voices of my squad had stopped entirely, replaced only by the mournful cries of their radios in my ear, the undercurrent of the Overwatch always _right fucking there_, just beneath it all but never beneath enough for me to not hear it. I was alone. The rest were dead.

He stood before me, alone and glorious and inhuman, an avatar of the masses and I knew then why they called him the One Free Man. His tool – I now identified it as a crowbar, of all things – bore the blood of my allies and it adorned his face too like war paint, but he gave way to no emotion. The doctor, this gore-spattered physicist, was the Combine dream and the Combine nightmare both at once, for he was everything they wanted mankind to be and yet he was sworn against them to the very end. He raised his eyes to me now, hidden behind a flash of light in his spectacles, and approached me quickly. Not running – where was the need when I was so petrified with awe? - but not walking. Fast. Purposeful. Devoted with every fibre of his being to ending me and all those like me, reluctantly brought to the wrong side of the fight and told it was the right one. The crowbar rose above his head, blood dark in the misty evening half-light, and this was my only chance to say anything before he ended my life, so I took it. Nothing to lose. But also nothing to say, except one thing. And I would have said it but for the mask on my face, in which my words were lost through crackling and static.

The bar fell. My eyes closed. Blood filled my helmet as I hit the ground, and it might have drowned me if I weren't so sure I was already dead.


End file.
